Choosing Service on MLK Day Over Trump’s Inauguration

By Congressman Kweisi Mfume | Word In Black(WIB) – On August 28, 1963, as a 14-year-old kid, I remember watching the TV broadcast of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ushering in the largest civil rights gathering of our time — the March on Washington. Dr. King was introduced as the “moral leader of our nation” and delivered a message which empowered the 250,000 people in attendance and countless others listening around the nation.Television was not always live as we know it today, and so, for most of us Dr. King’s immortal “I Have a Dream” speech was remembered through a delayed evening broadcast with grainy black-and-white footage and commentators attempting to describe something that the nation had not seen up to that point in terms of the sheer number of people involved. His words brought my mother to tears, and I sat in our tiny rowhouse with my three sisters all motionless from the magnificent power of his words. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was designed so as to intentionally inspire all Americans to volunteer and give back to their communities.I also recall the numbness I felt on the& evening of April 4, 1968, when Dr. King — who...